Naplwrimo

After a preview of George Tabori’s Flight into Egypt, Harold Clurman wrote that he found himself less interested in whether the play would be successful. He reported that he hardly cared what he "thought" of it.

Instead:

While I watched it my mind registered certain objections – the uncertainly articulated theme confusing a plot line that might be considered trite; what was important to me was the fact that I was enjoying a certain relationship to what I saw that could hardly be defined in terms of opinion. It was a sense of contact with a living thing – noticeably imperfect – hence an experience that was pleasurably ambivalent. Only through such contact could I know anything about the play.

The experience of the play – the sense of each actor on the stage, their struggle with the material which was suggestive and intrinsically absorbing – was being driven from me by something that was not essentially of the theatre. It is true that part of the pleasure of the theatre is the arena-spectacle aspect of it – the who-will-win excitement of a sports event. But what is most characteristic of the theatre experience is the joy of looking into a strange, imaginative world, and observing it with more concentration, love and curiosity than we do our workaday activities. This essential pleasure we are being increasingly robbed of by the cash-register or race-track climate which pervades our playhouses. The severity of our theatre audiences before the signal has been given them by the press, rumor and gossip that it is all right for them to enjoy a play is not at all critical severity. Criticism bespeaks awareness, sensitivity, discrimination as to the nature of one’s feeling, above all and to begin with, an openness to the senses and the heart. Our critical severity is a commercial reflex: we don’t want to be fooled – we must like or praise only what is accredited. That is why we have so much “criticism” in superlatives of praise or blame – both equally distorted. And the tendency of our official criticism is to imitate our practice rather than to correct it. Our practice consists in treating the theatre as a business rather than as free expression and play – even though the playgoer is not in the theatre for business. Harold Clurman, The Divine Pastime.

The Seattle Parks Department and Seattle Police are on the hunt for a tree murderer after maintenance crews discovered seven poisoned trees near the Burke Gilman Trail in North Seattle

This week, Parks crews found that someone had drilled a series of holes into the trunks of seven 70-foot silver poplars and Douglas firs along the Burke Gilman near NE 77th St in the Sand Point neighborhood, and pumped the trees full of herbicide.

The damage is estimated between $40,000 to $60,000 and Seattle Parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter says the all seven trees will have to be removed.

Seattle Parks has asked SPD to investigate. If someone is caught, they could be charged with malicious mischief or for a "timber trespass," the illegal cutting or damaging of trees.

The trees will have their revenge.

"Multitasking" is bad for you:

Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on.

"Multitasking" is bad for the world:

the end of the decade we may call the Roaring Zeros—these years of overleveraged, overextended, technology-driven, and finally unsustainable investment of our limited human energies in the dream of infinite connectivity. The overdoses, freak-outs, and collapses that converged in the late ’60s to wipe out the gains of the wide-eyed optimists who set out to “Be Here Now” but ended up making posters that read “Speed Kills” are finally coming for the wired utopians who strove to “Be Everywhere at Once” but lost a measure of innocence, or should have, when their manic credo convinced us we could fight two wars at the same time.

UPDATE: As commentor w7ngman notes, that last sentence isn't just a diagnosis of the multitasking disease—it's a symptom.

From the Atlantic.

Image by jurvetson (license).

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
Ram Dass

How do you get things done?

As you may have noticed there are a lot of tips about that floating around online.

One of my favourite productivity tips that has enabled me to get more done is to adopt a habit of acceptance.

This is a very helpful thing to cultivate. Here´s two reasons why:

• Less suffering. Pain is unavoidable in life. Suffering is however optional. The funny thing about a problem is that the negative feelings you may feel because of it do to a large extent not come from the problem itself. It comes from your resistance to the problem. You can choose to accept things as they are at this moment. When you accept you stop creating suffering within your own mind.
• Less mental fatigue. You may sometimes be more tired because you get more done. But I have found that I feel less fatigued mentally and in better shape internally when working in an accepting mode. There is much less overthinking and negative emotions when you are accepting so I guess that makes sense.

As you can see, acceptance is useful beyond just the area of productivity and is something you can incorporate into any part of your life.

Now, how does acceptance help you to get things done?

A short answer would be: as you accept you stop feeding so much energy into your own inner resistance. You stop sustaining and strengthening it. It dissipates. Now you can use your mind, energy, creativity and focus to get things done instead.

Procrastination is an inner resistance to something. Acceptance is a solution.

How to develop a habit of acceptance

Now it would be nice if I had a few snazzy and easy tricks to share here that would quickly help you to create a consistent habit of acceptance. I don’t. I have a few tips though.

Be patient.

Acceptance is like a mental muscle. The more you use it the stronger it becomes. And the procrastination tends to become less and less severe overall.

Your mind has to get used to accepting as a habit that replaces resisting. So you just work at it. And gradually acceptance becomes more and more of a natural choice in your everyday life.

Appreciate the upsides of acceptance.

When you don’t feel like accepting appreciate how much easier and enjoyable life becomes whenever you accept things as they are and work from there. This will turn your mood around for the moment and over time makes it easier for your mind to replace the habit of resistance with the a habit of acceptance.

A practical way.

Talking about acceptance can become a little abstract. You may feel like “well, I know I should accept X or Y, but how do I that practically?”.

Here is one way that’s been helpful for me:

When you feel a negative feeling then accept that feeling.

Don’t try to fight it or to keep it out (like many of us have learned throughout life). Say yes to it.

Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labelling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems to physically locate itself to the middle of my chest - and just observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. And your mind stops putting in new energy into the problem.

Is acceptance a magic solution that will make everything awesome?

Not really. You may have to do something you find boring. Acceptance might not make it the most fun thing in the world. But it can make it easier to get the thing done. And quite often you can – with the help of acceptance - become enthusiastic and really get into something you resisted and didn’t think highly of at first.

As you step in the mental state of acceptance you just flow with what you choose to do. Your day becomes lighter. There is little or no resistance arising within. Just being in that state feels pretty great. And as a bonus, you can get much done too.

I’m curious, what is your best tip for developing a habit of acceptance?

If you like this article, please give it share it on Stumbleupon. I appreciate the support. =)

Further reading:

- How to Improve Your Social Skills
- Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
- 16 Practical Tips for Solving Your Problems More Easily

Netflix is totallly fucked this week. Movies haven't been shipped on Tuesday or Wednesday, and today looks a little iffy, too. Hacking Netflix has only a little bit of news on the matter. One commenter there claims to work for Netflix and says that the internal e-mail system is down along with the shipping system. Now, I'm not an expert on these sorts of things, but this looks like a crippling computer meltdown of some sort, and not the work of hackers.

On the actual Netflix site, Netflix has released an oblique statement (image-captured in part above) regarding these outages that you can see in full here. Apparently, credits will be issued to customers, but a nearly one-week shutdown of a national company can't be good news for the ol' bottom line.

Commenters on Hacking Netflix are resorting to poetry in the wake of the tragic loss of movies in the mail:

:( i just want my movies...

i am kinda scared

and wonder if i should wait

on sending the ones i already

got at home back

or wait a week...

Comics

Vingt sur 20: French Comics

• See what else is happening in Books on Wednesday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

Note: This is a guest post by Stu of Improved Lives.

In most of the personal growth advice you will read, positive emotions are considered the goal. We think to ourselves, ‘I’m going to do this, this, and this and that will make me happier, more optimistic, and more outgoing.’

And you know what, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there are many, many different techniques, exercises, and strategies that you can use to achieve those goals.

The best way to achieve those ends would probably elude you though, because it is so simple, most of us don’t even think about it.

It turns out that one of the best ways to build up and create positive emotions is by having positive emotions.

Like most of the really useful techniques and exercises in personal growth, this comes from psychology. The theory is called the Broaden and Build theory, and it’s a fairly simple one.

Negative Emotions Lead to more Negative Emotions

Because of the way our brains are wired up, negative emotions tend to cause restricted, short term survival oriented behavior. For anyone familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, another way to put this would be to say that negative emotions tend to make us focus on the two bottom levels of the hierarchy, which are:

• Safety needs - safety of our job, of our body, of property, and our immediate health
• Physiological needs - concern for food, water, sleep, and breathing

The really important thing to understand is that this focus feeds on itself in a positive feedback loop. That means that focusing on negative emotions will make you focus even more on negative emotions, and your focus will slide farther and farther towards the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

It’s a vicious cycle that a lot of people struggle to escape from.

Positive Emotions Lead to more Positive Emotions

The good news though is that positive emotions work in the same way, which is where the broadening and building comes in.

When we experience positive emotions, our brains lose that narrow focus, the horizons of our mind expand, and we experience varied and novel thoughts and actions which encourages us to explore the world.

And just like negative emotions, positive emotions build on themselves. So experiencing positive emotions leads to more positive emotions and an even broader view of everything around us. This build up of positive emotions affects many, many different areas of our lives. Here are just a few examples.

The Benefits of Positive Emotions

The Broaden and Build theory shows that positive emotions build:

• Attention and Focus - When we’re experiencing negative emotions we tend to ‘miss the forest for the trees’. When we are experiencing positive emotions, our attention and focus are broadened and deepened.
• Scope of Cognition - Positive emotions cause us to see more interconnection in the world, be more flexible in our thinking, and see more relation and integration in our thoughts and ideas. All these things add up to a big increase in creative thinking.
• Better Relationships - Unhappy couples tend to interact in structured, predictable, and rigid ways. In contrast, happy couples interact in more unpredictable, natural, flowing way. Additionally, happy couples actually build up a surplus of positive sentiments for their partner and their marriage. This surplus acts like a buffer against negative emotions and conflict.
• Resilience to Negative Emotions - Positive emotions actually help to override negative emotions. It has been shown that “individuals who express or report higher levels of positive emotion show more constructive and flexible coping, more abstract and long-term thinking, and greater emotional distance following stressful negative events.”

The benefits of positive emotions are clearly varied and extremely substantial. The next thing we need to look at is how to bring more positive emotions into our lives.

4 Ways to Create Positive Emotions

There are many excellent ways to bring positive emotions into our lives. Here are just a few that research has shown to be particularly effective:

Do Relaxation Techniques - Relaxation techniques includes things like meditation, yoga, and muscle relaxation exercises. The primary positive emotion associated with relaxation techniques is contentment. Contentment is particularly good for reversing negative emotions and building resilience to negative emotions.

Find Positive Meaning - Finding positive meaning works in three different ways:

1. Reframing adverse events in a positive light (also called positive reappraisal)
2. Infusing ordinary events with positive value
3. Pursuing and attaining realistic goals

The trick to finding more positive meaning in your life is to just be constantly mindful of it. Evaluate every situation you’re in and try to apply those three ways to find positive meaning. The payoff is that people who find a lot of positive meaning in their lives will experience more of the whole range of positive emotions.

Just Smile - Our brains don’t know the difference between a real smile and a fake smile, so when you fake a smile, your brain responds in the same way (releases the same ‘happy chemicals’) that it would if your smile had been genuine. So even faking positive emotions can have a real, positive impact.

Do Something you Love - Some of my favorites are playing soccer, reading, and cooking. These things relax me, make me feel good, and let me forget about the world for awhile. Everyone’s favorites will be different and unique. Make sure you know what your favorites are and make sure they are always close at hand.

Remember that positive emotions are only one half of the equation. Negative emotions can be a serious detriment to any progress you make with positive emotions, so be sure to squash negative emotions as they come and replace them quickly with something more positive

Further Reading:

- Cultivating Positive Emotions to Optimize Health and Well-Being (pdf) by Barbara L. Fredrickson.
- What Good Are Positive Emotions? (pdf) by Barbara L. Fredrickson.

Image by Joyseph (license)

This is a guest post by Stu, who writes about how to use psychology for personal growth over at Improved Lives. He is the author of posts such as 112 Quick and Easy Personal Growth Exercises and 5 Happiness Boosting Exercises: Which Ones Work and Which Ones Don’t Do Anything.

If you like this article, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)

Further reading:

- How to Improve Your Social Skills
- Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
- 16 Practical Tips for Solving Your Problems More Easily

posted by evil robot 6

Mary-Louise Parker will star in a new production of “Hedda Gabler” on Broadway.

Local filmmaker and former city council candidate and monorail activist Grant Cogswell and a friend were attacked in Belltown last night in what appeared to be a gay-bashing that sent both men to the hospital.

At about 1:30 this morning, Cogswell says, he and a friend (who was in drag) were leaving a party at the Free Sheep Foundation in Belltown when a group of men in a late-model, red Dodge Magnum wagon began harassing them. One of the four men in the car shouted "you fucking faggots," at Cogswell and his friend. (Cogswell says his friend is straight and he is "mostly straight".) Cogswell yelled back “go back to Yakima if you don’t like seeing people in drag."

The car stopped and as the four men piled out, Cogswell says he sat down on the sidewalk, hoping to avoid a physical confrontation. "I don’t know how we’d have outrun these four dudes and I didn’t want to square off in fisticuffs," he says.

When the men approached Cogswell, he says, he asked them, "Guys, what's up? There's four of you [and] my friend's in high heels." Cogswell says he spoke briefly with one of the men before one of them attacked him, kneeing him in the face several times.

Cogswell ran out into the street, turned back and saw the men were attacking his friend. Bystanders approached the group of men, who then jumped back in the car and drove away.

Cogswell and his friend were taken to the hospital, where Cogswell received five stitches in his cheek, and doctors found that his right orbital bone—one of the bones around the eye socket—had been fractured and his front teeth badly chipped. Cogswell says there's a possibility that his fractured orbital bone could pinch a nerve or a muscle and require surgery. Cogswell's friend had with scrapes and bruises.

Cogswell was only able to give police a vague description of his attackers, but he says the man who kicked him was about 5'8 and Hispanic, wearing a white T-shirt. Cogswell says the attacker was accompanied by two tall black men—one of whom was wearing a blue jacket—and a tall white man with brown hair.

In the last year, there have been a number of recent violent attacks in Belltown, but Cogswell—who used to live in the neighborhood—says he's never seen anything like this happen.

I'll update with info about the SPD investigation when it becomes available.

Three of the elder statesmen of comic books — Neal Adams, Joe Kubert and Stan Lee — have joined forces to combat what they see as a real-world injustice.

I managed to see most of the shows and films on my last Big list. I'm in the process of writing about some of them. I post these lists for one pretty obvious one reason: I need a place where all the shows I want to see are listed. This eliminates all the postcards and newspaper article clutter (which makes very little difference in the overall clutter scheme at our house but I like to think it does). It certainly relieves some of the clutter in my head having to remember all the shows and when they are.

This month's list is short reflecting the falloff in the summer season.

Avant GardARAMA: An Evening of Short Experimental Plays
Cutting Ball Theater
Through August 16 @ the Exit.
San Francisco

Christian Cagigal's THE PANDORA EXPERIMENT
Through August 16 @ the Exit.
San Francisco







Twelfth Night
Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company
Runs in repertory with Comedy of Errors August 8 - September 14.
Sanborn-Skyline Park


Freedomland
Theatre in the Woods
Through August 31.
Woodside, CA







Then there's the little matter of deciding how or whether I'm going to be able to go to Portland, OR for PICA's TBA festival. So many good things to see - Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment, Mike Daisey. I've looked into flights but it's expensive to fly with three kids, so I'm wondering if I should maybe drive? Oh oh oh road trip with kids. Think hard.

Shared by Dorothy
snif

canon 30d w/ canon 16-35L

shot from my living room window. the world within seems scarier than the world out there as of late.

In July of 1518, a woman referred to as Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg, France and began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400.

Authorities prescribed "more dancing" to cure the tormented movers but, by summer's end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing. (h/t Hyde or Die)

Read more about Dancing Mania here and here.

“There is only one time that is important - NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power.”
Leo Tolstoy

“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
Albert Einstein

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
Buddha

I have written quite a bit about being present and how it can help you.

Today I’d like to list seven of my favourite benefits of being present. Many of them relate to or blend into one another.

Now, being present is quite hard to keep up. You slip back into not being present. And that’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up. Just accept that you are not present and you’ll feel better and more relaxed. Then it will be easier to slip back into the present moment again. Just like with anything, going for perfection often just leads to anxiety and beating yourself up. Going for consistency and improving your consistency gradually – slipping back into old habits less and less – is more useful.

Also, being present isn’t a magic pill that will solve all your problems or “fix you”. But like regular exercise, it can be helpful in several ways.

1. Improved social skills.

This may be one of the first things you discover when you start experimenting with being present. It was for me. If you have the problem that you get nervous/shy and “don’t know what to say” in a conversation then presence is one solution.

When you are present your head is no longer filled with past scenarios (“what did she mean when she said that?”) or future scenarios (“what will they think if say this?”). You let go off self-consciousness.

You are just here. With your attention focused outward towards the person(s) you are interacting with. You just let things flow out of you.

And in a way tip of assuming rapport is a way to tap into your presence in conversations. Assuming rapport means that you pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

When you’re with your best friends you are probably not thinking ahead that much. You are just enjoying the interaction, the present moment and all of you just let things flow naturally.

Presence can also help you with listening. It helps you to decrease the bad habit of thinking about the future and what you should say next while trying to listen. If you are present and really there while listening then that will also come through in your body language, which gives the person talking a vibe and feeling that you are really listening to what s/he has to say. Being present also improves your focus and allows you to better tune out possible interruptions or distractions in your surroundings.

2. Improved creativity.

If you write or do some other creative work you may have found that your best work flows out of you when you are not thinking that much. You just write, paint, play. You enter a state where things just come to you. Then later you can come back and edit your work.

This one is similar to the first reason. Writing is for instance similar to a conversation. When you are present in a conversation or while writing things it’s often best to not think to far ahead or you start to get self-conscious and second-guessing yourself. You create mental blocks that stop your creativity from flowing unhindered.

3. You appreciate your world more.

One of big advantages of becoming more present in your everyday life is that you decrease the amount of analysing and labelling you do to the things/people in your surroundings. You don’t judge as much.

This might sound strange but in the moments when you are present the ordinary world becomes more interesting and wonderful. Colors can seem brighter. Your see more aliveness in trees, nature and in people. You see the wonder of all your man-made gadgets and stuff. Things that most often seem common, routine and boring become fascinating and something you can appreciate.

It’s like you are observing your world with more clarity and curiousness. Like a little kid again, discovering things while they still feel fresh. Before they have just become walking, talking and growing labels with years of associations and thoughts attached.

Before you actually use this tip though – if you just think about it in your mind – it may not make that much sense.

4. Stress release.

When you are present there is a certain stillness and centeredness inside. You calm down. If you are feeling stressed during your normal day then one of my favourite ways to let that go is to take belly breaths and just focus on them for a minute or two.

This pretty much always calms me down. The breathing with belly seems to calm one down in a physical way. And by focusing just on the in and out-breaths you connect to the present moment instead of the past or future scenarios that are making you feel stressed.

5. Less worry-warting and overthinking.

If you are a chronic overthinker that goes round and round in circles in your mind before you ever get anything done then being present is a great release from that habit. I’m not saying that you won’t slip back into overthinking. But being present just for a while can help you. It can allow you to stop worrying about what may happen and just take some action to get started. To actually see what happens. If you’re an overthinker you may find 3 Good Reasons to Stop Thinking So Much, And How to Do It helpful.

6. Openness.

This is perhaps the best benefit. Being present removes the labels you put on people and things – temporarily – and opens you up to see and experience things without your preconceived notions. I think this is a big part in how being present helps you in conversations and with your creativity. You are open to new things as you are without many of your barriers within your mind. Things can flow easier through you without all that stuff in the way.

You make things easy on yourself in way. And you often get better results at the same time.

7. Playfulness.

As you are present you may feel a playfulness arise. This makes it easier to just do things. When you see things from a playful point of view things become less of a struggle created from within. You let go of that heavy, overthinking frame of mind.

Everything won’t become super easy to do. But many things become more enjoyable and easier to do. They become lighter. Less of a burden.

Kids are often more present and playful. You can return to that playfulness by connecting with the present.

Top three ways to slip into the present moment.

There are quite a few ways to return to the present. You can try a bunch of them out and see which one(s) that works best for you. My three favourites at the moment are:

Focus on your breath.

I mentioned this one above. You can find a quick guide to belly breathing in this article.

Focus on what’s right in front of you.

Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at what’s right in front of you right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. You can for instance use the summer sun or rain and how it feels on your skin to connect with the present.

Pick up the vibe from present people.

If you know someone that is more present than most people then you can pick his/her vibe of presence (just like you can pick up positivity or enthusiasm from people). If you don’t know someone like that I recommend listening to/watching cds/dvds by Eckhart Tolle like Stillness Speaks or The Flowering of Consciousness. His books work too. But cds/dvds are better than books for picking up someone’s vibe since the biggest part of communication is voice tonality and body language.

Check out 5 more ways to become present in this article.

If you like this article, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)

Further reading:

- How to Improve Your Social Skills
- Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
- 16 Practical Tips for Solving Your Problems More Easily

Shared by Dorothy
:( NO !

Shared by Dorothy
yeah but you still have to have outlook 2003 at least to get it onto your iphone or ipod touch.
meh

As of yesterday's announcement of CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you can now sync your Google Calendar with virtually any popular desktop calendar for free. Not only can you enjoy your favorite desktop calendar software and still get the benefit of the web interface, but you can also sync any desktop calendar with any other across platforms using GCal as a go-between. Let's take a comprehensive look at how to set up bidirectional syncing between Google Calendar and your favorite desktop calendar—from Outlook and iCal to Sunbird and Thunderbird—for free.

Remember, this doesn't mean that you can sync Google Calendar with just one desktop calendar. It means that no matter what you're using—Outlook at work and iCal at home, for example—you can always stick to desktop calendars if that's what you prefer. Google Calendar now works as both a great web application and a dedicated syncing tool. It's the cloud, and once it's set up, you don't ever have to access your calendar through the web again if you don't feel like it. But when you're not at a desktop, you can fire up GCal from any web browser, make changes, and still be confident your desktop is completely in sync next time you fire it up. Let's get started.

Sync Microsoft Outlook with Google Calendar

Syncing calendar events between Outlook and Google Calendar has been a cinch ever since Google came out with Google Calendar Sync, a free application that provides bidirectional syncing between the two. (It also supports one-way sync in either direction, if for some reason you don't want two-way syncing.) Assuming you're using a supported setup (Outlook 2003 or 2007 and either Vista or XP), here's how to get it working.

1. Download and install Google Calendar Sync.
2. Enter your Google account email address and password.
3. Select your sync method (most likely you want two-way syncing) and the sync frequency you prefer. It defaults to syncing every 120 minutes, which seems a little long for most.
4. Hit Save and you're done. Easy, right?

If you've added a new item to your calendar and you want to force a new sync rather than waiting for Google Calendar Sync to run its next sync, just right-click the system tray app and choose Sync. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Sync iCal with Google Calendar

As of yesterday, Google Calendar supports two-way synchronization with iCal through the CalDAV remote calendar standard. Setting up iCal with GCal varies slightly based on whether or not you're using your default GCal calendar or a secondary calendar. First, here's how to set up your Google Calendar default with iCal:

1. Open iCal, then fire up your iCal Preferences (iCal -> Preferences or Cmd-,).
2. Click on the Accounts tab, and then click the '+' button to add a new remote calendar to iCal.
3. Call the calendar whatever you want (I went with 'Personal' for my main calendar), then enter the Google account username (which is normally your Gmail address) and password.
4. Click on Server options to display the Account URL text box. For your default calendar, enter the following URL:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/youremail@gmail.com/user
   ...replacing youremail@gmail.com with your actual email address.
5. Once you've done that, just hit Add and you're finished. Give iCal a few minutes to download all your events and you're good to go.

If you want to add a secondary calendar, the steps are exactly the same as above with one small difference. Instead of inserting your email address in the Account URL as described in step 4, you need to grab the calendar ID for that specific calendar. You can find it by opening GCal, clicking the arrow next to the calendar you want to sync, and selecting Calendar settings. In the settings, find the Calendar Address section near the bottom of the window, then just copy and paste the Calendar ID (which is formatted like an email address) in place of youremail@gmail.com in the URL above.

You can refresh iCal to make sure you've synced the latest-and-greatest at any time by selecting Calendar -> Refresh or hitting Cmd-R. (Original post)

Sync Mozilla Sunbird or Thunderbird with Google Calendar

Whether your using Mozilla's standalone calendar application Sunbird or Thunderbird with the Lightning extension installed (Lightning integrates Sunbird into Thunderbird), bidirectional calendar syncing between either application and Google Calendar is a breeze. The special sauce in this sync is the Provider for Google Calendar extension. Installing Provider in either Sunbird or Thunderbird is basically the same procedure, and here's how it works:

1. Download and install the Provider extension by saving it to your desktop, opening the Add-ons dialog in either Sunbird or Thunderbird, and dragging the file you just downloaded into the Add-ons dialog. Once installed, make sure to restart the application.
2. Now that Provider is installed, you have to add your new Google Calendar. In Sunbird, go to File -> New Calendar; in Thunderbird, it's File -> New -> Calendar when you're in the calendar view.
3. You're now looking at the Create new calendar wizard. Select "On the Network" and hit Continue.
4. Choose Google Calendar as the calendar type. The Location field requires the XML flavor of your calendar's Private Address, which you can get by opening GCal and choosing Calendar settings from the drop-down next to the calendar you want to access. At the bottom of the settings page you'll see the Private Address section. Copy the XML link and paste it into the Location field in Sunbird or T-bird.
5. When you hit Continue, you'll be asked for your Google Calendar username (again, your Gmail address) and password. Enter it, give your new calendar a name, and hit Continue. You're done.

From now on, any event you add to that calendar will automatically sync to GCal and vice versa. You can reload the calendar to get the most up-to-date information at any time by clicking the Reload button in your toolbar. (The button is installed in the toolbar by default in Thunderbird, but you may have to customize your Sunbird calendar to add it to the toolbar.)

Sync Your Mobile Device with Google Calendar

If you're interested in syncing your mobile device with Google Calendar, you've also got a ton of great and free options. BlackBerry users can check out Google Sync, a BlackBerry app made by Google specifically for Gcal-to-BlackBerry syncing.

Alternatively, the free, open-source application GCalSync does bidirectional syncing between Gcal and tons of supported phones. (Original post)

If you're an iPhone or iPod touch user, you can set up automatic, two-way syncing between your Google Calendar (and Gmail contacts) with web site NuevaSync. (Original post)

Finally, if your phone supports SyncML, web application GooSync can handle Gcal syncing without installing anything.

Other Options

If you're not happy with the methods detailed above—which I selected because each represents the easiest and cheapest (read: free) option—there are still tons of other tools to sync Google Calendar with your desktop calendar. First, we've covered how to sync Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with the more technical GCALDaemon. Also, the cross-platform Calgoo just went free, with both Outlook and iCal syncing capabilities.

On a somewhat unrelated but still useful note, you can also now sync Google contacts with your Mac OS X Address Book.

How do you like to get your GCal on your desktop? Let us know in the comments.

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who isn't happy until everything syncs. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

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